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POINT is a not-for-profit organisation celebrating
excellence in design and its influence in contemporary
culture and society. POINT organizes conferences and
events, documents, publishes, promotes and celebrates
the creative industry.

POINT 01 AuthenticityLondon, 2-3 May

A two day London conference 2-3 May 2013 at RIBA,
exploring the theme of Authenticity with lectures from
legendary creative thinkers, innovators changing the
rules of branding and communication and the elite of
the design community.

TicketsPurchase here

Full Price Professional Tickets £400.Discounted Student tickets are still available at £180.BUY PROFESSIONAL TICKET

2 - 3 May 2013

London's International Design Conference

Tickets 1st September

by Robin Richmond, Conference director

After months of curation the POINT team are delighted to announce that the schedule for next week’s ‘Authenticity’ conference is published on our Schedule page.

It’s hard to pick out highlights as everyone speaking will be of significant interest and our sessions have been developed to enable delegates to identify key themes. POINT covers art, branding, education, entrepreneurial ventures, film and photography, graphic and product design, user experience and UX, a slice of neuroscience and some music.

We’re looking forward to our opening keynote at 10.00 on Thursday 2 May and we look forward to seeing some of you there.

David Hieatt

David Hieatt is an entrepreneurial figure that delegates to POINT’s Authenticity will find of great interest. A one time market stall trader, advertising creative, brand leader, company founder, town rejuvenator, conference instigator – the list of descriptors here doesn’t really encompass the broad array of talents, roles and ‘involvements’ to describe David’s life to date.

David steps onto the podium as founder of the much feted Do Lectures where he normally sits audience side as organiser and curator of an increasingly eclectic list of speakers at events in Wales and California. As if that were not enough he is also the Founder and principle of Hiut Denim – the name is a hybrid made from David’s sir name and the word ‘utility’ – the jeans brand set up in Cardigan, Wales. The brand boasts that it is set up to “do one thing well”, which given David’s multifaceted career is clearly no reflection of the many things he achieves.

Huit Denim is an extroadinary idea that on the one hand aims to establish an upscale hipster fashion brand and also create jobs in Cardigan employing people with incredible expertise and craftsmanship who had become unemployed following the closure of the town’s Dewhirst jeans factory when it moved production to Morocco.

David previously founded the action sportswear company Howies with his wife Clare in 1995, while working with Adidas. Howies was sold to Timberland in 2006. His background in advertising saw him cut his teeth at Saatchi and Saatchi where he began his relationship with sportswear brands pitching for Adidas work. One of Hiut Denim’s tags on their site says “Yup, we just make jeans. That’s all folks”. That may well be – but what is clear is that David Hieatt is anything but a one venture, one idea creative.

Nathan Webb and Sean Rees

Sean Rees and Nathan Webb are two young designers who have come to our attention for their work at Purpose and most notably for their initiative to rebrand The McGuire Programme and create awareness in the Programme’s mission to assist people who stutter and to help them become more eloquent and articulate in their speech.

McGuire Programme

Sean suffers from a stutter and so the initiative has a strong bearing on his life as he seeks to return the support he received in his early days. He has made significant advancements through his involvement with the programme and has recently undertaken training to become a coach on the programme.

At a recent four-day event in London, McGuire Programme participants gathered from all over the world (1% of the world’s population is afflicted with stuttering for which there is no cure, only therapeutic treatments) and challenged themselves at one of the toughest speaking environments, Speakers’ Corner, not as observers, but as participants.

McGuire participants at Speakers Corner, LondonMcGuire Programme

You can find out more about the McGuire Programme on the current website at www.mcguireprogramme.com - the newly designed site launches in May.

Tickets for POINT’s inaugural conference at RIBA themed on “Authenticity” are now sold out.

If you have been issued delegate ticket codes, these are still redeemable until midnight tonight. We look forward to seeing delegates at RIBA tomorrow, 66 Portland Place, London W1B1AD. If you don’t know London, RIBA is situated ten to fifteen minutes walk from both Oxford Circus and Great Portland Street underground stations.

Rhonda Drakeford

Rhonda Drakeford is the co-founder of the design consultancy Multistorey which spans the divide between interesting cultural projects and corporate assignments. Rhonda is also the co-founder of Darkroom, the independent store and online shop located on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, London, which has built up a cult following since its formation in 2009.

Parlour Culture 2009. Multistorey

Rhonda co-founded Multistorey with Harry Woodrow in 1997, following their graduation from Central St. Martins Art College. The studio has developed an eclectic mix of clients and projects across many disciplines and industries, united by work that has a conceptual core, but is also accessible to client audiences.

Darkroom explores several concepts within its store and is positioned at the crossover between fashion and interiors. The store holds functional pieces that also hold sculptural qualities. This means “a necklace may be worn traditionally or hung on the wall as an objet d’art”. Rhonda’s interest in Africa art forms is also explored with new takes on textiles and jewellery and present them in new contexts.

Hand-held mirrors. DarkroomAfrican patterns. Darkroom

Darkroom designs its own collections and also favours work by emerging and unknown designer and craftspeople.

by Robin Richmond, Conference director

Whinnie Williams “You Don’t Love Me”

POINT is delighted to announce that Get Mullered and Dance have agreed to speak at the Authenticity Conference, 2-3 May at RIBA.

Niyama – A Paper Island

Get Mullered and Dance takes its name from the collaboration between Robert Muller and Jessica Dance that has spawned a number of innovative projects based on the duo’s combined skills of film, animation, live action and set design.

Hanson of London

Having built up a following from projects for a wide variety of clients including Mulberry, Whistles, Selfridges and Hanson of London, the duo appear regularly in London’s creative blogs. Their unique style of stop frame animation has won many admirers and is a strong feature of their work. The recent Vimeo music video for Whinnie Williams at the top of this article references Robert’s love for French New Wave Cinema and features Jessica as Art Director.

by Robin Richmond, Conference director

Nick Couch

Nick Couch has one of those great ideas that’s so simple you wonder why it hasn’t been around for years. The Open Studio Club website is a free listing for artists and designers that enables people to find affordable space, while studios who host ‘guest’ designers enjoy the opportunity to place diverse talents into their business environments.

Free desk looking for stimulating partner

The breadth of possibilities are of course endless, with design studios taking artists and illustrators as guests within their studios while one creative advertising agency is understood to have placed a scientist within their environment.

Desk here

Nick’s versatility is evident in his resume, having worked with a long and impressive list of clients at branding agencies and client side with corporations.

He is an enthusiastic evangelist for the Open Studio Club and is convinced that the concept will change the way people see the work place and design working practices.

Dr Beau Lotto

POINT is delighted to inform readers that globally renowned neuroscientist Dr Beau Lotto has agreed to speak at the Authenticity Conference in May. Delegates may well be familiar with Beau’s work as he has been widely published and broadcast on the BBC’s Horizon, the RSA, National Geographic, PBS in the United States and has had the rare honour of speaking twice at the TED Conference.

Dr Beau Lotto at the Hayward Gallery

Beau’s latest initiative, Beautiful Mind, the world’s first neuro-design lab. It is ­a collaboration between leading designers and neuroscientists in association with London brand communications consultancy Purpose. Beautiful Mind is pioneering the understanding of perception and applying it to create transformational experiences that aim to foster a creative, compassionate and courageous way of being.

Lottolab Bee experiment

Another initiative, his Lottolab Studio, has been described as the world’s first public perception research space. Through its high profile collaboration with the London Science Museum, Lottolab set out to:

i. Deepen the understanding of human perception, advance personal and social well-being through perception research that places the public at the centre of the process of discovery;
ii. Create unique programmes of engagement that span social and personal boundaries between people, discipline and institutions.

Gary Aspden. Photograph @kipricephoto

Gary Aspden has been credited as an instrumental force in defining the “collaborative culture that has fueled street and sneaker culture in the past decade (think Peter Saville, Kazuki Kuraishi, A Bathing Ape, and Ian Brown)” as a result of his work for Adidas and in particular the development of the Adidas Originals range.

A northern soul. Gary Aspden on the BBC Street Style documentary

Gary has featured as a commentator for social documentaries of ’80s and ’90s fashion culture with appearances in the BBC British Style Genius series on Street Icons, presenting the view from the North West of England where the London term “casual” meant little in local popular culture.

Adidas Fac 51 – Y3

Gary has been a regular around the Manchester music scene, is known to DJ on off-nights and is friendly with local beat combos, The Happy Mondays and The Stone Roses. It is therefore not really surprising to see a special release of a limited edition Factory Records (Fac 51) Haçienda monogrammed Adidas-Y3 shoe featuring many of Ben Kelly’s design signatures for the interior of the nightclub.

While it’s easy to think of Adidas in terms of trainers and the ubiquitous brand with three stripes, Gary has helped to develop the way Adidas is understood through social impact, most notably at the London Olympics where he orchestrated a series of events exploring the potential of the identity through experiences.

Barber Osgerby’s Tip Ton Chair for Vitra

Barber Osgerby’s Tip Ton Chair for Vitra. Tipped position

Vitra describe Barber Osgerby’s design for the Tip Ton Chair as defining “a whole new chair typology”. The solid plastic chair with forward-tilt action has two types of sitting experiences – from a normal position, or tilted a few degrees forward where it then stays in place.

Unveiled at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan, the design has caught the imagination and Tip Ton was recently selected for a 2013 German Design Award from the German Design Council.

Little Printer

The Designs of the Year awards, ‘The Oscars of the design world’, as our friends at the Design Museum call them, showcase ‘the most innovative and imaginative designs from around the world, over the past year’. BERG are not surprisingly in the running for their Little Printer.

You can see nominations from the world of Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphics, Transport and Product Design until 7 July 2013 exhibited at the Design Museum. Category winners and the overall winner will be decided by a jury and announced to the public on 17 April 2013. You can also share your comments and tweet #designsoftheyear and of course see Matt Webb, founder of BERG, speak at POINT in May.

by Patrick Baglee, New York Editor

In the early Spring of 2005, POINT’s Patrick Baglee and graphic designer Quentin Newark met at Notting Hill Gate station and took the short walk to the mews studio of Alan Fletcher. Camera in hand, Baglee and Newark were to make a short film with Fletcher in which they hoped he would discuss – amongst other things – his work in progress, his studio space, his seemingly never ending appetite for design and who would win in a fight between a shark and an alligator.

Fletcher had been due to speak at a student conference, but illness meant he had been forced to cancel – the film being a substitute for his appearance. The film, ‘An audience with Alan’, assumed an even greater significance following Fletcher’s death just a year and a half after it was first shown.

Rarely seen in public to date, it remains one of just a handful of films that feature Alan Fletcher in conversation. It appears at POINT with the kind permission of Paola and Raffaella Fletcher, after a re-edit from Baglee and Newark – who as well as appearing in the film was Fletcher’s senior designer at Pentagram for five years and a regular collaborator for the following ten.

We will also show film shorts featuring Magnum Photographers Bruce Gilden and Elliot Erwitt
and film interviews from the late Alan Fletcher from 2005 and also a new interview with Milton Glaser.
Watch these pages for information regarding speaker updates and general news on the Authenticity conference.

What's the POINT

• POINT is an organisation developing content for conferences, events, film, media, print, publications and relevant formats to document the creative world.

• Coverage of the very best in design influencing and developing cultures changing and impacting society.

Who is POINT

POINT is a not-for-profit organisation brought to you by a collective of designers who passionately believe that London needs a forum to discover, exemplify and discuss the issues that design, in its many forms, creates on a day-to-day basis.

Robin Richmond former Founding Conference Director of Typo London, Georgia Fendley, Founder of Construct and Brand Director of Mulberry (2008- 2013) and Tim Fendley, Founder of Applied, together with Patrick Baglee, Writer-at-large and New York Editor, bring you POINT.